A Day In The War
by Gallifrey Immigrant
Summary: The War Doctor, while searching the leftover ruins of a battlefield, meets a hurt woman, and the encounter leaves him shaken.


The footsteps of the old man formerly known as the Doctor were almost inaudible over the roar of boiling metal. The Doctor's eighth regeneration ignored the smell of death all around him—he'd gotten used to it over time. (In some ways, that scared him more than any Dalek would). He surveyed the scorched earth, sonic gun slinging on his belt, looking to see if there were any survivors. If so, he'd have to kill them.

Saying time was of the essence was usually a cliche—unless you were fighting in a time war. Every second he wasted was a chance a Dalek could release a de-chronostabilizer, which was a very complicated name for the very simple ability to turn back time for a few seconds or minutes. With just one Dalek with that device, a victory could be rewritten into a defeat in moments. That was why he would have to move quickly and kill any Daleks who survived the crash. The Time Lords couldn't take yet another loss—they'd already had far too many.

"Help"

He turned his head. To his left was a young woman with blonde hair. She was dressed in the gear of the Time Lord's soldiers. Oddly, even though she was greatly damaged, she didn't seem to be about to regenerate. Either she was in her last regeneration, or Dalek weapons were getting even deadlier than the Time Lords thought.

He trekked to her, keeping an eye out for enemies. She saw him, and beckoned him over.

"Help me up, please! I don't know where I am...I barely survived..."

He looked at her suspiciously. "What's your name? How did you survive? "

"I am Rivialanderuvia. I was part of a whole platoon. We were winning, but then those damn Daleks used a time distortion field. It rapidly aged us, forcing us to regenerate several times in a row. Some of us were too busy in post-regenerative trauma to even fly our ships. Others just didn't have enough regenerations to spare." Tears began to roll down her face as she looked at all the corpses strewn around her. "By Rassilon, I think every else is dead..."

The old man dispassionately looked at the crying woman in front of him. Then promptly took out hig gun and shot her in the chest.

"What!" she said, first at the gunshot, then at the surprise of seeing brown sludge come out of her body instead of blood.

"Rivia died a week ago. Or was it a year ago? It's hard to keep track these days." He kicked a dead Dalek tentacle at his feet, while the woman lay sputtering in pain. "Your kind has no respect for anything but yourselves. You creatures would even dress up as our dead comrades. Taunting us from beyond the grave."

"I...am...A DALEK?" said Not-Rivia, shocked and horrified at the primal Dalek voice emerging from her throat.

"Heh. The best sleeper agent is the one who doesn't know it." He smirked. "I knew you were mad. But now that I've talked to you, now I'm sure."

"So, will you kill me now?" said the woman.

"What, no!"he said.

The woman smiled weakly at that. "Thank you for having mercy. Maybe the Time Lords can change me back to normal again-."

"You're going to be sent back to the Time Lords for experimentation." The woman's eyes widened in fear (and her head began to feel weird, like something was trying to come out). " We've never gotten a live specimen this advanced before. False memory implementation, simulated emotion—this is all very worrying tech the Daleks are making. Once we dissect you, we'll be one step closer to winning the war."

"Experimentation? Dissection? That's inhuman!" Not-Rivia said.

The man's previously unfazed visage became infuriated at that remark. "Inhuman? INHUMAN! You Daleks have slaughtered countless friends of mine! I have the faces of too many children in agony engraved in my memory! And now the Daleks have decided to use the dead bodies of my friends as puppets, and you dare call us inhuman?" The man's eyes blazed with anger stored for a very long time, and he seemed to be finally unloading it . "I lied before, when I said I couldn't remember exactly when Rivia died. I remember the day she died, the exact moment. I remember when all of them died. I have to try to remember them, even if no one else will, so that their deaths mean something. So don't you ever tell me about humanity, you filthy Dalek!"

The woman was stunned at his outburst, and so was he. After a few moments, she said "And so torturing me is going to make up for that? Being cruel will bring them back?"

"Don't patronize me." he snarled.

The woman's migraine suddenly went to a crescendo—and then passed. In front of her horrified eyes appeared the unmistakable silver tube of a Dalek protruding from her head. She looked at the man with pleading eyes. "SAVE...ME," she said.

"Even if I knew how, I wouldn't want to," said the man.

The woman's eyes suddenly went blank. Her eyestalk swiveled up to look at him. "ACCESSING DALEK DATABANKS...THE DOCTOR HAS BEEN IDENTIFIED...HELLO, DOC-TOR."

He ignored the Dalek, though he was visibly annoyed at the reference to his former name. "Time to bag you up for study," he said, producing a hyper-spatial container (that could carry things bigger than its external dimensions).

The Dalek's mouth formed a malicious grin. "RIVIA WAS A GOOD BODY TO USE AS A STEALTH UNIT. WE WILL HAVE YOUR BODY YET, DOCTOR. ONE DAY, YOU MIGHT MAKE A GOOD DAL-EK."

The man was distracted enough by that comment, that the Dalek was able to steal the gun from him. She pointed it at him.

"You really think you can kill me with that? You think I don't have defenses installed in my armor against that gun?As if a Dalek hasn't already tried to do that before!" he said.

"Killing YOU? No, that's what a Dalek would do." She looked at the gun. "I think there's still a little of not-Dalek inside me. This is what Rivialanderuvia would have done." And then she aimed the gun at her head.

Technically, the gun is meant not to make noise above one of ,say, a small car horn. for stealth reasons. But the next shot seemed to his ears to be one of the loudest shots he had ever heard.

When he got to the Time Lord Council, he was praised as a hero for having gathered important intelligence on the Dalek's newest war strategies. He was beginning to feel like there was hope of winning the war.

So why did he feel like the bad guy?


End file.
